Speak English Like it Tastes Good

This article by Kare Anderson is full of juicy ideas to make your speaking and writing more memorable and more effective.

The good news? If you practice speaking first about the other person's interests, then about what you share in common, and only then about how that commonality relates to your interests, four amazingly powerful changes occur in how that other person relates to you. The person listens sooner, listens longer, remembers more, and assumes you have a higher IQ than if you first speak about your own interests.

Say it better

Simpler writing = more readers

William Dubay of Impact Information has shared this in a review of readability research:

"Macfadden Publications, Inc. A Study of What Makes it Hard or Easy to Read. New York: Macfadden Publications, Inc., 1947. This report was for businessmen writing advertisements for mass audiences. The study analyzed more than 1000 ads of more than one-third page or larger over a period of three years. The study found that the three most-read ads had a 1943 Flesch rating of 1.12-- comfortable reading for about 80% of the population. The three least- read had a rating of 3.36--comfortable reading for less than 35%."

This hit home with me(mm)because I had just read an issue of Inside Counsel, a magazine directed to lawyers working in the legal departments inside business. I was struck by the number of full-page ads touting the services of outside-counsel which were, wholly or in part, unreadable.

This was startling because an advertisement should be the simplest, catchiest writing ever conceived by a law firm -- in fact their marketers or designers should be involved.

Even inside counsel are busy and do not have time nor the inclination to read long blocks of text that are a distraction from the content of the magazine to begin with.

Well, maybe not that plain

Full and honest disclosure of the facts does not always suit the business purpose of a communication.

Arnie Herz at Legal Insanity tells the story of his wife's late night shopping trip. When she ask the store manager for another checker because of the line up for the single cash register, "he looked at her and gruffly responded... that people should expect to wait when they shop so late at night."

The wife then pointed out that the store's sign says “we’re open late for your shopping convenience.”

Arnie suggests a rewrite for the sign:

"We're open until midnight, but we can't provide you with fast and efficient checkout or plentiful and affable employees after 9pm."